This is how we make babies

I actually started my first blog in 2008 to document the beginning of our journey with infertility.  It was a private blog with no followers.  Equal Parts Hope and Faith.  It was really just an online journal to document the pain and frustration that burdened my heart. I deleted it a while back.  All of that emotion and information and research.  I wish I hadn't, but I can be hasty like that on rare occasion. 

I had another blog I started when I learned I was pregnant for the first time, back in February 2010.  I documented everything.  Cycle days.  Protocol.  Doctor appointments.  It was the first space I wrote the words- "I'm Pregnant." 

And then on St. Patrick's Day I learned my pregnancy was no longer viable.  And was told to go home and wait to miscarry.  So I did.  With a hole in my heart.  I never wrote about the miscarriage.  I ended up having to have a D&C on April 6, 2010.  It was a day that breaks my heart over and over.  My baby was a little boy.  He would have been two this month.  I quit blogging while I tried to heal the hole in my heart.  Again, I wish I hadn't.  For me, writing is healing and I should have given a voice to those emotions. 

When I began preparing for my 5th fertility treatment (4 IVF cycles + 1 FET), I decided that I was not going to blog about it.  I can be superstitious and felt that maybe I was jinxing myself, prematurely getting my hopes up.  Sharing too much of what might not be mine to keep.  Ridiculously juvenile thinking in hindsight.  I get that now.

It was a difficult cycle.  I developed severe OHSS and was on bed rest.  I was  pregnant with multiples and lost Baby A at 9 weeks.  Our second angel.  They actually suspect I was pregnant with triplets but the third sac was empty so it was never confirmed. 

I wish that I had blogged during that time.  I wish that I had the foresight to know that this pregnancy was real and would last and would be the one to finally make me a mother.  But I didn't.  I took pictures of my belly every week, documenting a pregnancy I didn't believe was real, but I didn't write about it. I am grateful for those pictures but sad that I didn't capture my pregnancy with words the way I had always dreamed I would. I didn't write in any of the pregnancy journals I received as gifts.  Didn't fill in the pregnancy calendar identical to the one I had been so detailed with for my first pregnancy.  I couldn't shake the feeling that this baby was not guaranteed to be mine until I held her in my arms. 

I suppose that is what happens when you become comfortable and accepting of the struggle.  And I don't mean just infertility.  I have always been a glass half full type of girl despite the hardships I've endured.  But I carefully balance that with always waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

So although I'm not ready to delve into the complexity and severity of our infertility, I do feel that I am ready to make a home for parts of it on this blog.  And I am certainly open to discussing or answering questions if you'd like to direct them to me in an email. 

So that brings me to today.  Where I get to share that we are working on Baby #2.  It sure isn't happening the fun old-fashioned way, but I've grieved that loss already.  It still stings from time to time, but I am ever grateful to modern medicine and all that has enabled Paul and I to become parents.

We have 4 frozen embryos from our last IVF cycle (the one that gave us our miracle, Elena) that are sitting on ice in NJ waiting for us.  We have decided that since we will be home in NJ for the month of December, we will coordinate a Frozen Embryo Transfer with our trip so we can cycle with our beloved fertility clinic. 

I am nervous and anxious and scared and uncertain.  Translation- I am down right panicked.  But excited, hopeful, and positive at the same time.

So yes, friends, this is happening right now.  This is how we make babies. 

Baby making cocktail sprawled out on my mother-in-law's bed...scandalous! 

If you decide that you don't want to follow along as I document this go-around, I understand.  But I'm making no apologies and no hasty blog-deleting decisions, no matter what the outcome.

 I realize that, although infertility doesn't define me or my husband, it is a huge part of our lives.  One that I feel needs to be included and incorporated throughout this blog of mine, as it is still painful and real and present, even now that I have a child. 

Once Upon a Dime is here to stay.